


dear forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

by thedoubteriswise



Category: Dreamboy (Podcast)
Genre: Bruises, Comfort Food, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Post-Episode 6: Jupiter's Lifeless Moons, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 06:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17844023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedoubteriswise/pseuds/thedoubteriswise
Summary: Luke looks so fragile at first glance. He’s skinny and pale, everything about him soft and yielding. His movements are quiet and his voice brushes his lips in a shy whisper. But underneath that, he’s way braver than me. I think I look a lot more confident to people who don’t know us, but things don’t scare him the way they scare me. Shit, things that repel most people draw Luke like a magnet.





	dear forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

It’s really starting to get cold now, and the air feels kind of clammy. It’s not actually that time of year yet, but it smells like Halloween, the mildewed, damp odor of mud and dead leaves blowing through town, dusty and humid at the same time. There aren’t as many bugs as there were a week ago. It feels like a cheesy 80’s horror movie. Something in the back of my mind keeps waiting for those creepy little Wednesday Addams clones to sneak up on me. They probably love that shit.

The walk is clearing my head, though. Jennifer telling me that stupid zebra was already dead and then running off without providing any explanation threw me - god, she’s so fucking weird - but it’s been a few minutes, so I’m back to thinking about Luke. Of course.

Which is so stupid, because I don’t care! What am I, his mom? Who cares where he is? Who cares why he’s not texting? Not me, because I’m busy with other shit. And so is he, probably.

I check my phone again. Nothing. Alex hasn’t messaged me either, which is fine. I probably won’t hear from him again, and that doesn’t bother me.

Like, really doesn’t bother me, not the way not hearing from Luke doesn’t bother me.

I can’t text him again. Either he’s busy and texting won’t change that, or he’s ignoring me and I should be able to take a hint.

It’s the second thing. Fuck.

I’m still really hungry, because I never did eat lunch. My stomach feels like it’s about to digest itself and everything around it, like a black hole trying to suck the rest of my body into itself. I consider stopping to pick something up, but I think that would take longer than just eating the leftover pizza I’ve got in the fridge at home.

The wind feels wet and chilly on the back of my neck, and the sidewalks look bruised in the violet twilight just before the sky goes totally dark. The lights on one side of the street have the new bulbs, cold and glaring white. The other side still has the old sodium bulbs, with circles of light pooling below in a hot, baked yellow. The first few leaves of fall rattle across the street with each gust of sodden air.

The walk feels longer than usual, probably because my body is desperate for calories, but I’m still kind of surprised that I’m already close to home. I round the corner and Emily’s house comes into view. My steps slow to a cautious amble. Something’s different.

The porch light is off, but there’s a dark shape sitting on the steps. I approach slowly. It’s clearly a person, but I don’t know who it--

Luke.

It’s Luke. I didn’t even recognize him under the oversized sweatshirt he’s wearing. He’s hunched over like he’s freezing. My heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s about to crack my ribs.

“Luke?”

He glances up, but his face is hidden by the hood. “Hey.”

The words come out before I can think about them, way too sharp. “Where the hell were you?”

He cringes, hard. Fuck me, I’m the worst person on the planet.

“Don’t yell at me,” he mumbles.

“I’m-- I’m not,” I take a breath. “Sorry. Just. Are you okay?”

“Sure, yeah.” He shrugs. I still can’t see his face.

“How come you didn’t text back?” I instantly feel stupid. “I mean-- not that you have to, or whatever. I was just wondering.”

“I dropped my phone.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“It’s okay. It was under warranty.”

I nod. God, he looks tiny and cold under that sweatshirt. “Do you… want to come in?”

He’s quiet for a second. “I guess.”

I climb the steps past him and he gets up to follow me inside. I unlock the door and it opens with a tortured creak. I turn on the lights, toss my keys onto the dented table near the door, turn around, and feel my mouth drop open.

“Holy  _ shit _ , Luke.”

He winces. He’s pulled the hood off and I can finally see his face. The whole left side is an angry blotch of purple and blue, the broken capillaries seeping across his cheek and eye socket like watercolors painted in blackberry juice. His eye is swollen - it’s still mostly open, but the lids are puffy, a glossy plum color that looks terrible and dark against his almost translucent skin.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” My throat is sticky and clogged. I should calm down and mind my own business, but my stomach feels like a yawning void looking at him, and it’s not because I’m hungry.

He won’t look me in the eye. “Same as usual, it’s not a big deal.”

Luke looks so fragile at first glance. He’s skinny and pale, everything about him soft and yielding. His movements are quiet and his voice brushes his lips in a shy whisper. But underneath that, he’s way braver than me. I think I look a lot more confident to people who don’t know us, but things don’t scare him the way they scare me. Shit, things that repel most people draw Luke like a magnet.

But at the moment, he’s curled in on himself like someone scooped out his middle. He looks, I don’t know. Diminished.

I hate it.

“It… kind of looks like a big deal to me.”

“Whatever.” He’s still slightly hunched, looking at something over my shoulder instead of my face.

He smells wrong and it’s bothering me. Not in some creepy jealous way, I just mean that I know the sweatshirt is borrowed. It smells like someone else’s skin and too-strong laundry detergent. I want to get close and breathe in the smell of his hair, but even if that wouldn’t be ridiculously inappropriate right now, I have this weird, awful feeling that he wouldn’t smell like himself anyway.

“Um,” I fumble for the next thing to say. “I’m super hungry because I didn’t have lunch. There’s pizza in the fridge, do you want some?”

He fidgets. “Sure.”

“Okay, cool.” I nod once, but don’t move. “You’re not a vegetarian or anything, right?”

“Nope,” he says. “Dead animals, yum.” He smiles weakly.

“Good, I’ll uh,” I make a weird motion toward the kitchen, “I’ll go heat it up.”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Actually, you know what, I should… I should probably go back to the empty house.”

My stomach sinks. I want him to stay so badly. I’m not going to worry about why right now. “Oh. I mean, yeah, that’s… fine.”

“It’s just I kind of want to take a shower.”

“Oh, well, you can do that here. If you want.” I also want Luke to take a shower, because god I really hate how he smells right now and okay, yes, maybe it’s a little bit jealous and creepy. Jesus, I’ve only known this guy for a couple days, I need to relax.

“I…” He shuffles. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Emily’s shower has really good pressure.”

I get him a towel and a change of clothes, which I guess he doesn’t technically need, but I figure I’ll offer them on the off chance that it makes the gross sweatshirt go away. I leave one of my own sweatshirts on the pile of clothes, just in case. I don’t wait to eat.

He comes down a long while later. It’s hard to tell with all the injuries on his face, but I think his eyes might be a little red. My clothes are too big on him, but they’re better than what he had before. He pulls the sleeves of my sweatshirt down over his hands. That impulse to grab him and stick my face in his hair is screaming right now. 

“Hey. Feel better?”

He nods. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I slide a slice of pizza into the skillet on the stove.

Luke frowns. “What are you doing?”

“Heating pizza.”

“In a pan?”

“Oh, yeah,” I shrug. “This guy I dated for a while in college always did it that way. He said it made the crust better.”

“Was he right?”

“Yep. Only about this though, he was like, universally wrong about everything else.”

Luke smiles. He looks miserable under the angry purple bruises, but his smile still makes me feel like a thousand lightning bugs are floating in my chest. He sits at the table, pulling the chair out and sitting down like he’s afraid he might hurt it.

I go to the freezer and pull out a bag of peas. I’m pretty sure no one actually eats frozen peas, but every freezer on the planet can mysteriously produce some as soon as there’s an injured person nearby. I wrap the bag in a dish towel. Emily has these ugly floral dish towels that look like something my grandmother would buy, and I can’t tell whether she bought them ironically or not.

I hesitate. “Do you want to take some pictures first or anything?”

Luke looks startled. “Oh, uh. No, I… I don’t think so.”

I slowly put the bag of peas over his eye, moving carefully so I don’t hurt him worse. I don’t know how to ask the next thing I’m thinking, because he already kind of brushed me off once.

“Should we take some pictures for um. For the police?”

He looks up at me with his undamaged eye, somehow frowning with only half his face. “What? No.”

“Right. I just meant--”

“It’s not like that.”

“Okay.” I nod. “I had to check. You know?”

He slumps. “I know.”

I turn back to the stove and take the lid off the skillet. The cheese is gooey and melting off the sides, sizzling against the pan. I slip the spatula under the crust. It’s crispy and perfect.

Luke hasn’t shown much interest in the whole food thing, but as soon as I put it in front of him he wolfs it down. I get him a glass of water without asking if he wants it, but he practically inhales that too.

“Want more?”

He looks like he wants to say yes. “I’m okay.”

“There’s plenty.”

He smiles. “Your boyfriend in college was right.”

I smile back. “But only about the pizza.”

“Yeah.”

I put another slice on for him.

“Hey listen, I’m sorry about earlier. When I snapped at you.”

He shrugs. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I got all freaked out when you didn’t text me back, but that was my problem, not yours.”

“Oh.” He looks at me for a beat or two. “Why would that freak you out?”

Great fucking question. “I don’t know. I thought you were mad at me or whatever.”

He’s quiet, absently unwrapping and re-wrapping the peas. “I guess I was kind of mad,” he sighs. “But that was stupid.”

“About the cakes?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why I was being so weird about it, though, it wasn’t like… a big deal.”

“I mean, maybe not, but it was still shitty of me, so you’re allowed to be mad.” I shrug. “I’m sorry about that too.”

“I know,” he says. He smiles again, kind of shy. “You apologize a lot.”

“I fuck up a lot.”

“Everybody fucks up a lot.”

I don’t really know what to say to that, because I’m pretty sure the majority of the population fucks up way less than me, but I’m not going to start a pointless conversation debating it.

I pull the pizza off the stove and put it on his plate. I can’t believe he’s not burning his mouth with how fast he eats it. His hair is falling in his face, still damp and messy. He looks almost normal from where I’m sitting, the undamaged half of his face toward me.

“I was also just worried about you.”

He looks up, but doesn’t say anything.

“I know we barely know each other and you don’t need me worrying about you, but… I guess I kind of talked myself into being scared that you weren’t okay. Which was dumb, I know.”

He looks down at the greasy plate for a second. “Not that dumb,” he murmurs.

My chest feels like my lungs are being dragged out between my ribs with a meat hook.

“Hey, are you sure you’re fine?” I ask. “Obviously you don’t like… have to tell me anything you don’t want to, it’s just--”

“He didn’t do anything I said no to, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I stare at him for a second, trying to decode that.

“That’s not the same thing as only doing things you said yes to.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

“He did, though.”

“So I won’t see him again.”

I nod and try to hide the fact that I’m silently hoping the guy dies in a blazing, gruesome car accident that takes an hour or two to actually kill him, and Jesus, that’s an uncharacteristically macabre thought.

“Was that his sweatshirt you were wearing before?”

“Yeah.” He wrinkles his nose. “It smelled kind of weird.”

“It totally did.”

“I threw it out.” He smiles. “Yours smells good, though.”

I feel something bright and sparkling go all the way to my toes and the words are out of my mouth before I can overthink them. “Do you want to stay? Just to sleep, I mean.”

He looks almost relieved for a second before his face goes dark again. “I know I look completely tragic right now, but you don’t actually have to take care of me.”

I’m about to tell him that I don’t want to take care of him and that I didn’t mean to sound like I thought he needed it. That wouldn’t be a lie. But it wouldn’t really be the truth, either.

“I know, but… What if I want to?”

He tries to look like he thinks I’m an idiot, which shouldn’t be that hard, since I am. But he looks happy, too.

I squeeze him too tightly when we finally land in bed. Something about the way his skin feels under my hands makes every problem I’ve ever had dissolve and drift away like drops of blood in running water. Light rain taps on the bedroom window as the breeze blows against the house, but that’s where the world stops, the entire universe confined to this room. The threadbare sheets have never felt so soft.

He snuggles back into me even though it’s not actually possible for us to get closer. His hair is in my face, and my shampoo smells incredible on him. I’m kind of getting hard, and I think he is too, but we both ignore it for now.

“Maybe we’ll have the dream tonight,” he sighs.

There’s no logical reason that would happen. There’s no logical reason for us to be having the same dream in the first place. “Yeah, maybe we will.”

I hope we do.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from Richard Siken's "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out," because it's still cool to use excerpts from "Crush" in 2019, right?
> 
> Thank you as always to Lu, my writing pal and beta, for being excited about this weird little podcast with me. She's phoenixflight on AO3 and stillwaterseas on Tumblr, so you should check out her work too.
> 
> This fic is rebloggable/retweetable on [Tumblr](https://thedoubteriswise.tumblr.com/post/182902897419/dear-forgiveness-i-saved-a-plate-for-you), [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/503464), and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thedoubteriswi1/status/1097660726800338945).


End file.
